Zeldin encourages Republicans to embrace early voting if they want to win elections

Former New York GOP gubernatorial candidate and Rep. Lee Zeldin on Tuesday urged Republicans to embrace early voting in order to win elections. 

"It's important that we get out, especially with low propensity voters, to make sure that they vote early," Zeldin said on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "If they legalize ballot harvesting, Republicans need to ballot harvest better than the Democrats to the extent that the Democrats end up regretting legalizing it in the first place."

Zeldin is not the first prominent Republican to advocate for the early voting strategy. Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin have both said the GOP needs to get behind early voting to win elections. 

Zeldin emphasized that sometimes unpredictable things can happen that could prevent in-person voting and the GOP should get ahead of the game and get voters to cast their ballots early. 

"We saw this in Nevada in 2022, where Republicans were not leaning into ballot harvesting – which was legalized – and early voting, and it ended up costing us a Senate seat when a snowstorm hit Reno," he said. 

Chairman of the Wisconsin GOP, Brian Schimming, said last year that if the Republican Party wants to win elections, it has to embrace early voting. 

"It's not just important, but it's the key to winning," Schimming said in an interview with "Just the News, No Noise" last year. "I've been around for a few years and I generally have not voted absentee or early in my life. But, look, things are changing."